Question about Load Balancing Routers

[baxtmann]

Alright,

So first off, I have 2 internet connections:

1. Rogers 25/5 (+/- 20 ms ping) with a usage limit of 100gb (with a $5/gb overage charge)

2. Xplornet 25/5 (700-1000 ms ping) with a soft usage limit of 100gb (After 100gb the speed throttles down, so there are no overage charges)

I want to combine the two connections at the same time. I know the ping of the xplornet will be rough, but I can deal with it.

But, I also have a work computer that needs to have a low ping (close to 20ms or so) for the work I do, so I am looking for a router that allows me to route the specific traffic of the work computer to always go through the rogers internet.

I made a shitty flowchart to help illustrate my idea:

And here's an example of what the traffic might look like for one month.

                     |Rogers    | Xplornet    | Usage Total

Work Laptop |   10gb    |    0gb        |    10gb

Computer 1  |  37.5 gb  |     42.5gb  |    80 gb

Computer 2  |  37.5 gb  |     42.5gb  |    80 gb

Total             |    85gb    |    85gb      |    170gb

 

So you can see that the internet is split evenly between the two routers (85gb per router), but the router needs to keep it balanced as the work laptop uses extra internet.

I am wondering if its possible to do this with a router, and also wondering which routers would be able to do this.

I am proficient with Cisco, Aruba, and all of those enterprise routers, just wondering if any of them would actually support this type of thing.

 

If you need anymore info, lmk

Cheers.

[manikyath]

i know of *one* instance where someone did this stuff, but it was entirely linux front to back: linux computers, linux firewall, the lot. i'm also not sure how it worked with long sustained loads (eg. downloads of large files).

 

that said.. i'm not sure load balancing is what you want here, because the connection type of both uplinks is so vastly different, and load balancing without a device on both sides (most load balancing setups have a device or service on either end) is not really a "one size fits all" sort of deal.

[Meic]

Looking at the docs, pfsense seems to offer this capability. Both the load balancing across multiple WAN gatways and the creation of static routs for certain devices using firewall rules: https://www.netgate.com/docs/pfsense/routing/multi-wan.html

Big disclaimer though... I have never tried this so no idea if it will work.

 

EDIT:

If you do get this working, I would be very interest so let us know how it goes.

[baxtmann]

46 minutes ago, Meic said:

Looking at the docs, pfsense seems to offer this capability. Both the load balancing across multiple WAN gatways and the creation of static routs for certain devices using firewall rules: https://www.netgate.com/docs/pfsense/routing/multi-wan.html

Big disclaimer though... I have never tried this so no idea if it will work.

 

EDIT:

If you do get this working, I would be very interest so let us know how it goes.

Yea tbh, not sure how well it will work since both connections are very different, but I will give this a try this weekend... thanks!